Irish Breakfast

[geeber1]

I love the Adagio Irish Breakfast tea, it's one of my favorites. I wondered if anyone could tell me why the types of teas used in Irish Breakfast blends varies from vendor to vendor? I guess I always thought that if it's called Irish Breakfast, it would be the same combination of teas as a standard.

[edkrueger]

From Adagio:

Our new combination of black teas from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Assam (India).

Its is normally Assam based or purely Assam.

[geeber1]

After posting the question, I wondered why I did. I love the Adagio version of Irish Breakfast and probably won't buy it anywhere else. I guess I just wondered why there were different combinations out there. For example, teasource.com uses Assam, Nilgiri, and Africa.

[kymidwife]

Hmmm... I just guessed it's a matter of branding/marketing, with vendors trying to slightly differentiate their "brand" so it won't be an absolute duplicate of someone else's... yet similar enough to appeal to the mass market. If you happen to like Adagio's formula for Irish Breakfast the best, you are less likely to be seduced by someone else's version, so their "brand" has become your brand, and other brands don't taste "right"... thus, a successful marketing of the product.

This can backfire, though, if the "secret ingredient" deviates too far from the norm... for me, it can conflict too much with my expectations. For example.. don't add cinnamon to my chili spice mix, that's just gross. Different is not always better.

Sarah

[geeber1]

Agreed.

[omegapd]

After enjoying Twining's Irish Breakfast, I thought the Adagio one was a touch too mild. That said, I keep both of them in the house now, for whatever the mood dictates. If I remember right, the Twinings is Assam and African.

[Chip]

Kenya is becoming a huge producer of tea, and it is usually very cheap. Soooo, it is often added to improve the profitablity of a blend.

Also, blending by larger companies is done in order to create consistancy from harvest to harvest which is harder to do with a single component tea.

Blended teas are often more agreeable to larger market segments as well.

[omegapd]

Kenya is becoming a huge producer of tea, and it is usually very cheap. Soooo, it is often added to improve the profitablity of a blend.

The way things seem to be going, Kenya won't be like that too much longer. The majority of 100% Kenya tea I'm seeing now on-line are Orthodox Picked and quite good. The one from Special Teas is so much like a Chinese Keemun/English Breakfast tea it's unreal. Now, Rwanda and Cameroon and some other places are still using everything they grow and are CTC processed- and not getting any better. I think that's one reason Twinings admits to Kenya tea in their English Breakfast yet say "African" tea in the Irish Breakfast.

Course, who knows?

EW

[Salsero]

The way things seem to be going, Kenya won't be like that too much longer. The majority of 100% Kenya tea I'm seeing ...

Wow, that's some high level analysis of world tea trends. Good sleuthing! Thanks.

[omegapd]

The way things seem to be going, Kenya won't be like that too much longer. The majority of 100% Kenya tea I'm seeing ...

Wow, that's some high level analysis of world tea trends. Good sleuthing! Thanks.

Yeah, I'm very worldly. But I do have opinions.

[Riene]

Just tried a box of Irish Breakfast tea from Trader Joe's. The label says second-flush Assam and Kenyan tea. Wow, that is some strong tea. I like it!

[treazure]

The first thing I did when getting home after taking son number 4 for his nerve ablation was put on the kettle for tea and made him drink a cuppa before he headed off to work on a new virtual reality thing where my husband works. He wasn't gone for 2 minutes when he got back and asked if he could have more tea in his insulated mug. I didn't know the bloody mug would take the entire bleeding teapot of tea to fill! He said it was great tea, better than Luzianne. Duh.

So a question for the rest of us on the dark side. Is it worth buying Stash's Super Irish Breakfast or should I just baby along the 200 grams of Irish Breakfast from Adagio which a friend sent me and wait till Adagio has IB in?

[VinceBLG]

As far as I can tell most of the teas that are blends enjoyed originally in the British Isles are blends of India teas. This is because sometime after China told England they couldn't have anymore tea trade the English planted tea in India during the Raj. The blends are made to be strong with tannin and astringency to stand out in milk as was the drinking trend back then.

Anything in these blends from Africa or China is probably a newer version.